Govt Seeks LNG Spot Cargoes to Avert Power Crisis

The government is likely to resort to emergency liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchases from the spot market to overcome the ongoing electricity crisis in the country. The government is working on a plan to buy two spot LNG cargos to restore the power supply from the RLNG-based power plants, an official source told the scribe. The source said that according to the Ministry of Energy estimates they would require Rs. 40 billion for the spot purchase of LNG and the Ministry has requested the Finance Division for the provision of funds in this regard, the source said. Since the last four months, four LNG-based power plants with a capacity of 1195 MW are under forced outages. The power plants that are closed due to the unavailability of re-gasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) include Rousch 410 MW, Nandipur 525 MW, FKPCL 140MW, and GTPS Faisalabad 120 MW. The RLNG supply to these power plants was closed down in December 2021, mainly due to the non-availability of RLNG. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government had stopped buying spot LNG cargoes due to high international prices and the contracted LNG was not enough to cater to the supply of all the power plants.